


Atomic

by awz



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Dangerous scavenger hunts, LGBTQ Character, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Schizophrenia, Similarities to the movie Nerve but I added way more gay people, Sketchy invitations via email, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26611846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awz/pseuds/awz
Summary: Paranoid shut-in Ezekial Woodman is not a huge fan of his life changing in any way, big or small. Unfortunately for him, he checks his email every day.
Kudos: 2





	Atomic

**Author's Note:**

> it's about time i do something with these characters

Ezekial has a bad habit of only sleeping for an hour or two per night, if he even sleeps at all. He would insist, if he had someone to insist with, that he felt perfectly fine and delightfully adequate every single day, sleep or none. It’s not true, of course. He’s as sluggish and corpse-like as he assumes people would view him, if people viewed him, though he’s in deep denial about needing a better sleeping schedule, so it doesn’t truly matter. He’s in deep denial about a great many things, in fact.

Ezekial is very fortunate to have two loving parents, not because he receives a great deal of emotional support or encouragement from them, since he refuses to answer their messages. He refuses to answer their messages because his phone is bugged and every letter he types, every sentence he forms, every minuscule tap to the phone’s screen is transmitted to the Network. So, really, it’s nothing against his parents, of course, since they’re lovely people and he wouldn’t mind talking to them under different circumstances. He simply doesn’t want his private conversations to be monitored, which is quite a reasonable thing to want.

Ezekial is very fortunate to have two loving parents because they have very well paying jobs that allow them to fully fund Ezekial’s admittedly low-budget, meager lifestyle without him even having to think about getting a job of his own, because, let’s face it, Ezekial would not do well working any sort of position in any sort of establishment. It would be an understatement to say that Ezekial is physically weak; he would need to put an embarrassing amount of effort into lifting a gallon of milk, if he were the sort of person to purchase gallons of milk for lifting, quite similar to the struggling of a young child trying to lift a gallon of milk, so any career paths involving physical labor are undoubtedly out of the question. Ezekial would also make a poor cashier or sales representative or telephone operator or receptionist or any such occupation that involved communicating with others, as Ezekial is quite mute.

Ezekial spends all of his hyperabundant free time in his apartment, which technically belongs to his parents, as they are the ones who signed the lease and pay the rent and utilities and ask the landlord to call them every now and then to make sure Ezekial is alive. He is the only one who lives in the apartment. It’s a fairly spacious place; most of the other apartments in the building house a few roommates each, as it’s a college town, after all, and even a few small families have taken residence over the past few years. Although Ezekial has briefly thought on multiple occasions of surprising his parents with lessened rent by inviting a roommate or two to live with him, he always has the common sense to quickly write off the concept as a silly notion worth absolutely no in-depth consideration or planning.

The apartment’s walls are painted a dark gray, and the ceiling is painted white. Ezekial is a rather big fan of the ceiling. It’s completely flat, no bump or wrinkle or spike in sight. His parents’ home had those popcorn ceilings that are home to thousands, maybe millions, of tiny mountains and craters that make Ezekial feel sick even just imagining the sight. He never touched the popcorn ceiling when he was still living with his parents, often staring up at it from his bed at night musing that his hand may very well develop some sort of hideous, incurable condition if he ever happened to accidentally brush it against the ceiling, because it is extremely common for one’s fingertips to mistakenly feather across the ceiling during day to day activities. In this apartment, however, Ezekial has stood on the bed or the couch or the table multiple times to press his palm against the flat, white, beautiful ceiling. It always feels blissfully cold.

The blinds are always down and the curtains are always drawn. Ezekial has lived in the apartment since he was nineteen years old and he has not once pulled the blinds up for any reason. The blinds were up the day he moved in, and on that day he felt a great deal of satisfaction in pulling them down, a simplistic but stunningly symbolic act of his presence in the apartment that was probably akin to Armstrong sticking the flag on the moon. The only issue was that light still seeped in through the cracks in the blinds, creating cascading parallel lines of sunlight painted across the floor. Past Ezekial quickly rectified this problem, of course, nobly ordering thick black curtains to hang over every window so not a drop of natural light would ever touch his beloved habitat ever again.

With sunlight effectively banned from the apartment, one might surmise that Ezekial has a plethora of lamps strewn about to make up for the lack of brightness, but that would be incredibly, laughably wrong. Ezekial does not own a single lamp, nor does he ever use the light fixtures installed in the bathroom and kitchen (the other rooms are pleasantly void of this feature, much to Ezekial’s delight, as the unblemished flat ceiling is something worthy of careful preservation which a light fixture would devastatingly mar). In fact, on the same day he moved into the apartment and permanently pulled down the blinds, Ezekial used blue painters tape to secure all light switches into their ‘off’ positions.

Ezekial uses flashlights and candles to see. He has never used any other source of light to navigate his apartment, and with luck, he will never have to, as he is quite enamored with his current arrangement. He still doesn’t know if he prefers one over the other, as both the flashlights and the candles have their strong suits. His flashlight collection ranges from tiny pen lights to big, blocky ones with thick handles, each one slightly different in terms of bulb luminosity and color, with some warm, some cool, some bright, and some dim. His candle collection has a similarly wide array of options, in both size and scent.

A guest to Ezekial’s apartment would likely come to several conclusions very quickly, ranging from complaints regarding the lighting to concerns for Ezekial’s sanity. Ezekial would of course assure this hypothetical guest that he was doing quite well with both his visibility and his mental stability, though he would never actually need to assure anyone of these things, as he has never had a guest over and hopes to never invite one. He would not call himself particularly antisocial or introverted (do recall that bit about him being in denial about lots of things) but he would certainly be willing to admit, if he had someone to admit things with, that if given the choice between inviting someone to his apartment and not doing that, he leans towards the latter.

Ezekial does not have hobbies, which is fine by him. He doesn’t have a television in his apartment because no matter how channels are received, whether by satellite, cable, or antenna, the screen of the television would then be able to broadcast around the clock video of everything Ezekial does, and Ezekial is not the type to allow himself to be viewed by people he cannot see. Ezekial does not have many electronics in his apartment, for that matter; electrical outlets are similar to television screens in that they capture live video, which is why Ezekial keeps blue painters tape over every exposed outlet in the apartment except for the one in the pantry where he charges his laptop, because he can easily just close the door to the pantry so that the outlet can’t pick up anything.

Ezekial owns a great deal of books, which are all stored in one of the spare bedrooms, which he has turned into a personal library by shoving a bookcase against every spare inch of wall. He does not read these books, though, because after reading something once, he already remembers every word, so there’s really no need to ever read it again. Besides, Ezekial recently realized that the pages of books can be poisonous, so it is better for him to keep books closed and shoved safely onto shelves anyway. 

There’s not much else in Ezekial’s apartment that provides for much in the way of entertainment. He owns no board games or playing cards or puzzles or any such thing which he supposes would be rather fun for him to own. He has a few of these things saved in his shopping cart and he could easily open up his laptop and press ‘place order’ whenever he pleases, but he always decides against it, because he could order them and receive them and then discover that they have ways of transmitting his information to the Network, or maybe just discover that the way they feel against his hands is unbearable and maybe even toxic.

Speaking of his laptop, it’s really the only thing he ever uses, and he doesn’t tend to spend too much time on it at that. He opens it once a day to check his email, which hasn’t been used to contact him since he graduated from university. His spam folder is often sent newsletters about lawnmowers and offers for title loans from illegitimate firms, but his main inbox has remained stagnant for a little less than two years now. In theory, he could stop checking his email, but as Ezekial is lacking in the departments of having hobbies and people to talk to, he has very little schedules in his life, so checking his email once daily gives him a small spark of pride.

His only other routine, besides checking his email, is going to the grocery store every other Sunday. These shopping days are the only days where sunlight touches his skin. He has never bought anything particularly interesting or out of the ordinary; his shopping basket is usually only occupied by bread, peanut butter, eggs, and cleaning supplies, though he occasionally also purchases new flashlights, new candles, batteries, and fruit. He is not sure why he keeps buying eggs, as he never uses them to cook anything, and without fail ends up throwing out the whole carton after a few weeks.

Ezekial sometimes stops in front of bags of trail mix and a few times has even put one in his basket, taking no more than a few steps down the aisle before promptly turning around and pushing it back on the shelf. His usual diet of peanut butter sandwiches is enough to keep him from dying but it lacks the proper nutrition to keep him in particularly good shape. He resolves this problem by bringing home the occasional fresh apples and grapes, as well as some vitamin supplements that he doesn’t quite like or dislike the taste of; oftentimes he wonders if simply buying different foods could do him some good. He never does it though. He’s never had trail mix before, not that he can remember at least, and he’s not sure how cashews taste, or how raisins feel, or how M&M’s improve the trail mix experience. He’d rather stick to what he’s used to.

Ezekial’s life, from someone else’s perspective, would seem dull at best and insane at worst. However, Ezekial does not have anyone to discuss perspectives with, and he is quite content with the way things are. He doesn’t think his life is all that concerning. He considers himself to merely be a simple person. He doesn’t need hobbies or friends to get by. He gets out of his apartment at least twice a month. He checks his email every day, he throws his eggs out every now and then, and he only drinks tap water out of a red plastic bottle (the only thing he owns that can hold liquid). He’s rather happy, he supposes, with his dark and nearly empty apartment, and his empty inbox, and his cell phone sitting powered off in an otherwise empty kitchen drawer that he never opens.

He imagines that if anything happened to him that he wasn’t already used to, he’d dislike it.


End file.
